Scientist

Duties And Responsibilities

• Work with Lab Operations group to optimize lab environment to maximize efficiency and reduce risk of product contamination or loss.
• Cookinate with other project members to ensure timelines and material production requests are met.
• Develop mRNA-Lipid nanoparticle vaccines, through microfluidic and impingement jet mixing devices:
  • Purify research-phase recombinant proteins, virus vaccines and or virus-like particles in support of other groups at the VRC
  • Support technology transfer of processes to VRC Pilot Plant for manufacture of clinical product including authoring process descriptions, reports, and on-floor support.
  • Develop novel techniques protocols for process development, including high-throughput and/or robotics-based methods.
  • Perform protein small molecule conjugation experiments to support method develop mentor conjugate-based vaccine candidates.
• Author training documents, instrument SOPs, and other equipment supporting documentation.
• Author process documents to support toxicology lot production including batch records and process summary reports.
• Analyze and compile data, present at various group department meetings.
• Support the Purification group of the Vaccine Production Program VPP Labs of the Vaccine Research Center.
• Develop downstream purification processes or recombinant proteins, virus vaccines, and virus-like particles VLP that may be used as clinical vaccine candidates.
• Serve as a functional point of contact in chromatography process development unit operations.
• Provide critical process step assessment and experimental design to define optimal process parameters for chromatography unit operations.
• Train group members in large-scale unit operation such as AxiChrom column packing and Pilot-scale chromatography execution.
• Perform protein-small molecule conjugation experiments to support method develop mentor conjugate-based vaccine candidates.
• Facilitate consortium authorship efforts in project-specific technical reports and protocols.
• Operate, calibrate, or maintain equipment used in quantitative or qualitative analysis, such as spectrophotometers, calorimeters, flame photometers, or computer-controlled analyzers.
• Maintain laboratory equipment.
• Operate laboratory equipment to analyze samples.
• Operate microfluidic mixer for lipid nanoparticle development studies.
• Clean Equipment
• Work products and documents related to developing downstream processes for recombinant proteins, virus vaccines, and virus-like particles (VLP) that could be used as clinical vaccine candidates; serving as a functional point of contact in either chromatography or filtration (normal flow and tangential flow filtration) purification process steps for a given project.
• Work products and documents related to working with the Group members to design, develop and optimize purification process for all clinical trial vaccine candidates.
• Work products and documents related to writing and reviewing technical protocols and reports; purifying research-phase recombinant proteins, virus vaccines and/or virus-like particles in support of other groups at the VRC.
• Work products and documents related to developing novel techniques/protocols for process development, including high-throughput and/or robotics-based methods.
• Work products and documents related to performing protein/small molecule conjugation experiments to support method development or conjugate-based vaccine candidates; analyzing and compiling data, present at various group/department meetings.
• Meet with lab members to present updates.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Microbiology, Chemistry, or related field.
• Minimum of 5 years of relevant laboratory experience in biopharmaceutical manufacturing, preferably in vaccine development.
• Experience with chromatography, filtration, and microfluidic mixing technologies.
• Strong understanding of protein purification techniques and process development.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.